Summary and Schedule

This resource is an introduction to 360 degrees panorama photography. It explores different types of panoramic representations and examples of 360 degree panoramas in the cultural heritage domain. Practical advice and step by step guidance on how to capture data and process them is also included in order to produce and publish 360 degrees panorama images.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

  • Define 360 degrees panoramas and distinguish different methods for capturing 360 degrees images.
  • Practise 360 degrees acquisition, processing, production and publishing of a panoramic representation of a setting or space.
360 image
© Felix Mizioznikov AdobeStock

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.

Equipment

For spherical panorama capturing and processing you will need the following equipment:

  • A digital specialised spherical camera. There are different commercial cameras for capturing spherical panorama images, however it is preferable to use a well-established brand that specialises in spherical cameras for high-resolution imaging. Some of the brands that offer professional products are:

    Professional (stereo and mono):

    Commercial (stereo and mono):

    • The list of commercial cameras that capture spherical panorama photos and video (stereo and mono) is fairly extensive. A comprehensive list can be found at the Matterport website which also offers a range of other solutions and software.
  • A tripod must be used because spherical panorama photo shooting needs to be stable otherwise stitching errors may occur.

Software

For this tutorial you will need access to:


  • Spherical panorama viewers (hosted or self-hosted)

    You can view spherical panorama photographs as flat distorted images such as the one above. However, to be able to interactively rotate images you will need special viewers such as Pannellum Online or self-hosted viewer.


Example Data Sets

Here, we can use data captured from a practical exercise or the already captured data hosted on our D4Science repository. You can download the full data set as well as having a quick preview of the final result. This is achieved by copying the link of each image onto the Pannellum spherical panorama viewer like the example below.

First try to experiment by Right-clicking on one of the images and copy the image URL address into the URL box of the viewer

St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 1 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 2 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 3 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 4 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 5 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 6
Photo1 DATA SET Photo2 DATA SET Photo3 DATA SET Photo4 DATA SET Photo5 DATA SET Photo6 DATA SET
St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 7 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 8 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 9 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 10 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 11 St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Photo 12
Photo7 DATA SETS Photo 8 DATA SET Photo9 DATA SET Photo10 DATA SET Photo11 DATA SET Photo12 DATA SET

Photos of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church Brighton (UK), DSVMC University of Brighton, under DSVMC, via D4Science

Details

For this resource, you will need:

The resource is built with The Carpentries Workbench, as part of the training activities of the AHRC-funded network service on Digital Skills in Visual and Material Culture.

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